This invention relates to stents and is directed more particularly to a self-expanding, generally cylindrical stent preferably made of a shape memory alloy such as Nitinol.
Specifically, it is directed to an improved version of the type of stents described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,354,308 to Simon et al. and U.S. Pat. No. 5,540,712 to Kleshinski et al. The entire contents of these patents is incorporated herein by reference.
The stents of these patents are adapted to assume one configuration in which the stent is expanded and another configuration in which the stent is in a reduced size for delivery by catheter. The stent may be laminated within an elastomeric sleeve.
It has been deemed desirable to provide stents of this kind in elongated versions. Such elongated versions require additional flexibility over the length of the stent.
It is therefore, an object of the invention to provide stents of the foregoing type in which a plurality of radial sections or segments made up of the cells comprise the body of the stent the segments being interconnected by a single wire or one pair of adjacent sections of the wire which act as bridges, the straight connector sections being longitudinally aligned with the longitudinal dimension of the stent body or at an angle thereto. Such connector sections have been found to provide requisite flexibility in elongated versions of these types of stents both for delivery and implantation.